Guide: Introduction to Alaska Airline’s Mileage Plan

May 22, 2017

As I mentioned in the introduction to this trip report, I booked a one-way Qantas business class ticket from Sydney to San Francisco using Alaska Airline’s Mileage Plan. While I’ll share more details about how I actually booked the flight and my review of the flight later on in the trip report, I wanted to first introduce Alaska Airline’s Mileage Plan program.

2 miles per US $ (or local currency equivalent) at hotels and resorts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean and at all Crowne Plaza®, Hotel Indigo®, Holiday Inn®, and Holiday Inn Express® hotels worldwide.

1 mile per US $ (or local currency equivalent) at Staybridge Suites® and Candlewood Suites®.

500 miles per stay at hotels & resorts outside of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean and at all InterContinental Alliance Resorts worldwide.

For the first 10 business days after opening your Mileage Plan account, you are unable to make any mileage transactions on your account.

After this time, you can purchase miles by following the link on the Mileage Plan homepage once you are logged in.

If there is a discounted or bonus miles sale on, you will see the details appear now. Usually they are on a sliding scale with the discount/bonus percentages varying depending on how many miles you purchase.

In this case, there isn’t a sale on so the cost per mile is $0.0275 USD + 7.5% Federal Excise tax.

A maximum of 60,000 points can be purchased per transaction but there is no limit on how many miles you can purchase per year

Though, keep in mind that the purchase of Alaska Airlines miles is processed by points.com which limits 4 purchases per credit card per month

Points post instantly to your account and you will also be sent a confirmation email.

Redeeming Alaska Airlines miles

All partner award bookings come with a $12.50 USD partner award booking fee (one-way). Additionally, if you are booking a Cathay Pacific or LATAM flight, these can’t be booked online, so you must ring the call centre to redeem. In this instance, you will also be charged a $15.00 USD phone booking fee. The phone booking fee may be waived for MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75k elite members.

If you are booking a British Airways or Icelandair flight, Alaska will pass on the airline’s carrier surcharges which can be hundreds of dollars.

Though changes to awards can be made free of charge up until 60 days before departure, once you are inside that timeframe you will be subject to a $125 USD change or cancellation fee.

Combining Award Partners

With Mileage Plan, you cannot combine award partners but can combine a partner airline with Alaska Airlines.

Example 1 – Invalid award

Cathay Pacific – Brisbane to Hong Kong

American Airlines – Hong Kong to San Francisco

Example 2 – Valid award

Qantas – Sydney to San Francisco

Alaska Airlines – San Francisco to Seattle

Stopovers

On an international one-way itineary you may have one free stopover (more than 24 hours) before continuing on your journey.

For international return itinearies, you can get a little more creative with 2 stop overs and 2 open jaws allowed.

However, you must take the most logical route to your destination – no back tracking.

Example: Fly Emirates Sydney to Dubai (stopover), then Dubai to New York City. On the return you could start your journey in Milan (open jaw), back to Dubai (second stopover) and finish your journey in Melbourne (second open jaw).

For intra-us awards, you can also have a free stop over as long as you are flying on Alaska Airlines.

How to check flight availability

The following guide in this trip report explains how I booked a Qantas business class seat from Sydney to San Francisco. The process for booking an award ticket on a partner airline which can be booked online is very similar so I won’t go into detail about that here.

However, Cathay Pacific and LATAM availability can not be searched nor booked on the Alaska Airline’s website. You should find the available flights yourself and then call to book. Though you could call the Alaska Airline’s call centre and simply tell them you want to fly Sydney to New York City on Cathay Pacific sometime in June, I’d advise against it. You could spent hours on the phone going back and forth with the agent. Not only will you become frustrated, but you might lose that award seat before you’ve even found it.

To find Cathay Pacific availability you can use the British Airway’s tool, Qantas or my favourite, Japan Airlines. While I’ll have a detailed guide coming later in the year about how to use Japan Airlines to find availability on Cathay Pacific, feel free to leave a comment or contact me for some tips on how to use it.

To find LATAM availability you can search via British Airways or LATAM pass.

How to book flights

For all partners except Cathay Pacific and LATAM, you can complete your booking online by following the steps after finding award availability.

For Cathay Pacific and LATAM, you must call Alaska Airline’s directly. I have found that calling around 5pm AEST results in the shortest time on hold.

The best number to call is 0011-800-25275200 and can be dialled straight from your mobile. Keep in mind that as this is a 1800 US number, the call isn’t included in most mobile phone plans with international calling. An alternative is using Skype.

Sometimes the agent who initially takes your call will be able to assist, while other times you will be put through to the partner desk.

It is important to have ready:

Your Mileage Plan Number

Details of the flight you want to book (Flight Number, Departure and Arrival Time)

Other flight alternatives.

With Cathay Pacific especially, the availability you have found during your research, likely won’t align with what the Alaska Airline’s agent can see. It is a known discretion and unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. Say you have found 1 available seat on the Brisbane (BNE) to Hong Kong (HKG) route using the JAL tool. The change that the agent is also able to see that seat is quite low. However, if there are 4 seats showing available, the agent would likely be able to see a couple of seats.

By all means, this is the most frustrating and time consuming part of the process. You must continually check for availability and call in as soon as you see availability. While it’s important for you to keep your cool during the experience, you can always end the call politely and try HUCA.

HUCA – Hang Up, Call Again is a well known tactic to find those pesky hidden award seats. Sometimes agents in different call centres can use the system slightly differently or just have better luck at finding the seat you’re after.

Personally, I’ve had better luck with agents located at the Boise centre, but you can’t pick and choose where your call is diverted to.